Eden's P.O.V
I threw my hood back, letting my thick blonde hair fall down my fragile body. I was unnaturally thin, like everyone in Lowhaven, and my petite height didn't help to make me look any healthier. I could've been taller, I supposed, if I'd had the nutrition my body had badly needed, but I hadn't got it. The good food stayed up north, in Highhaven, and down here in the south, you got watery, tasteless slop.
That was the best part of it, how you couldn't taste it. The lumps made you gag enough without help from the flavour.
I was seventeen years old but looked only 15, partially because I was underdeveloped, but mostly because I didn't have time to dress my age, hiding with my mother. Hell, I wasn't even supposed to know my family, as all kids were thrown into cruel institutes as soon as you were born where you were beaten until old enough to work.
But not me.
I was my mother's biggest secret, and nobody but her closest, dearest friends even knew that I, Eden Winford, existed.
Keeping a baby from the Regime was one of the worst crimes possible. Louise Winford, my mum, knew that and had given away countless amounts of children before, but when she gave birth to me, something in her snapped.
Twins, she had unexpectedly. One male, one female. The Regime only knew about one of us, and my mum had undergone so much heartbreak over the years, that she knew such an opportunity couldn't be wasted. Choosing between me and my brother, my mother would tell me, was one of the hardest decisions of her life. She picked me because I was the smallest and she knew I wouldn't survive in the institutes. I always thought her saying that was obscene, but she had a point. I probably was the weakest.
I opened a small hatch hidden behing a hanging blanket, and crawled through - not for the first time thankful of my scanty size and flexible body.
My secluded refuge was very tiny indeed, and held only a rickety wooden bed and some thin threadbare sheets that had too many holes in them to count. It was always dark and dingy, although sometimes during the day frail beams of sunlight danced through cracks in the slabs on the wall, illuminating the room a little, and even bringing some warmth.
This place in winter was deadly. The cold was one of the biggest causes of death in Lowhaven, and it wasn't for the good community spirit, over half of us would probably have perished. Yet even neighbors would turn on each other, which was why my mother was so reluctant to share anything with them, encase they took it to the Regime for a little reward money.
Things were so bad, that we couldn't even trust people who we were supposed to be close to.
Spring had arrived a few weeks back, but the days weren't getting any better. If anything, they were getting worse. The mayor of Arkhem, Elias Kronin, had ordered that the slaves double their workload and get everything done twice as fast. It was impossible - we knew that and he knew that. Not that he cared, as all he wanted was money and power, two things that we unwillingly helped provide him with.
If only there was a way we could stop, strike out and refuse his rules and order. Demand he leave and never come back. But that was an impossible dream we were too scared to share.
He was such an authoritative man, and had self elected himself to dominate over us, be the 'fatherly figure'. Except for the fact he wanted us all dead.
I had never met my dad, like most kids down here in the south. No, correction: all kids in Lowhaven, except for me. I was the foreigner, you could say, the illigal immigrant who the Regime wanted to find and 'kick out.'
Just because a woman wasn't married, or in a relationship it didn't mean she wasn't still required to have children, quite the opposite.
Men from Highhaven would come, and well...one of those men was my other parent.
That means I have hundreds of half sibling up in the institutes, not that I'll ever meet them.
At ten, every child comes back to the south to work in the furnaces and mines which they do until they die. Woman have to start having kids as soon as they turn 20, but still have to work until a critical stage in their pregnancy and then, reluctantly, the Regime lets them rest.
I peer through a break in the wooden wall, watching the busy street outside. Mercenaries cross my vision every once in a while, but it's the bloodied, whipped raw, malnourished slaves pulling and heaving large crates with chains biting into their flesh, that really capture my attention.
You could be my brother. I thought to myself, staring at some boys that looked around my age. Or you...Or you.
Even if I did see him though, I doubt I'd recognize him. He'd probably be so filthy and badly bruised that he'd just seem like another unfortunate, wretched soul to me and not the boy I so desperately wanted to meet.
But then, did I really? Did I want to look him in the eye, the boy who my mother had disfavoured to me, and say...what? There was nothing I could say. Not even sorry would be enough.
It wasn't my fault, not really, but I still blamed myself. What would have happened if he was picked and I was not. I think my mother even wonders that sometimes, guiltily. A boy would have helped her better.
I'd have to work soon, as my mother had got me a job at the docks moving cargo onto a trading ship. It was hard going, I'd done it for the past few months, and it scrubbed your skin raw and gave you cuts all over your body. But that couldn't be helped. It was no where near as bad as what the slaves endured, so I tried not to complain and put on a strong face.
Having a job was very risky, and I'd only started it because me and my mother were desperately short on cash. My salary was exceedingly meager, not enough to buy anything, but it helped, even if only a little.
If a mercenary noticed me, and asked me who I was, then I would be discovered, and I didn't want to think what would happen then. My mum would be almost certainly shot, but me? I didn't know. I didn't want to know.
The Regime probably wouldn't know what to do with me either, as I'm guessing illegal children isn't something you see and deal with everyday.
A shout from the square interrupted my daydreams, so I quickly moved my face back to where I could see outside, and gasped.
A man had fallen to his knees, crying and wailing but not making any attempt to move anymore. Mercenaries surrounded him in a flash, and the rest, I didn't want to see, so I clamped my eyes shut. But that was not to say I couldn't hear anything.
BOOM!
It was a sound that was all too familiar. A moan sounded in my throat, but I muffled it quickly, knowing that this shack wasn't soundproof and the cutthroat soldiers didn't mind killing another, even if they were just a sobbing onlooker, or bystander.
This was everyday life in Lowhaven, and we'd all learned to hide our sorrows because seeing it was what agitated the mercenaries most.
We hated it - I hated it. We all despised ourselves for not being strong enough to stop it, and getting revenge, but we were just too afraid and weak.
I pulled myself up, shaking my head and trying to block all thoughts from my mind. A small cup of water was laid for me on my bed, so I gratefully downed it, careful not to spill a drop. Dehydration was another big killer here in the south, the second most to be precise. The liquid tasted funny, and it was a little warm, but that couldn't be helped. Water was water.
That was the attitude I had to have for everything. Food was food. Sheets were sheets. Garments were garments. Life was life.
My clothes too were old, tatty, thin and second hand, given to me from my mother.
She didn't look like me, not really. We had the same tiny figure, and brown eyes, but her hair was a shocking shade of red. I on the other hand, had flaxen hair with pale, sallow skin and small, pointy ears.
My outfit was baggy, a little too big for me and consisted off a pair of black three quarter length trousers, a once white tank top and a muddy beige shirt. My feet had suffered badly in a pair of flimsy brown canvases, but it was better than getting cut on the sharp stones outside in bare feet.
No one wore dresses ever. That was more of a Highhaven thing. They were impractical and useless, a no-no for when in the south.
All pretty things belonged up north, and we had no time and money to waste on our appearances.
Carefully, I moved through the shack to the door and stuck my head out. Imposing grey clouds greeted me, as well as a whirl of brown dust that had gotten kicked up into the air when people hurried over the dirt track roads.
The street looked like every other. Grimy. Brown. That was practically the only color here, and everythng was covered in it. Small wooden huts lined the edges of the roads, and cheap street lamps were lit when it got dark. We weren't important enough to have real lights that ran on electricity.
That word was unfamiliar in my mouth. Electricity. No one had really ever witnessed it's powers, except when in the Institutes where it was used to illuminate the way around the place and stop you from tripping up in the darkness. They wouldn't want that, you hurting yourself.
I was very fortunate indeed to have never witnessed the horrors that happened there firsthand. There was a reason why you didn't see many small teenage girls around Lowhaven. They never survived the first ten years of their horrible lives.
Men with guns wandered past me, glimpsing at my face but not reacting. I pulled on my grey cloak and covered my face with my hood. I couldn't be noticed. That would lead to a disaster.
The docks were a good mile away from my house, so I got moving, not wanting to be late as that led to money being deducted from my already puny pay. The man I worked for, Roscoe Hudson, wasn't someone who liked parting with his coins, so he would pick up on any flaws and go on from there.
Roscoe was a Highhaven merchant, and he owned part of the docks. He was a liar and a cheat, like most people from the north, and was paranoid of people stealing his Gambols.
Gambols were the currency of Arkhem and was what most people dealt in. They were as precious to Roscoe as food and water was to me, and he kept them locked up and with him at all times.
I could not be late.
Swiftly, I moved on foot, winding in and out of slaves and other starving children. Another benefit of being so tiny was that I was nimble, and could fit any place where others could not: helpful for when loading items onto ships. That was most likely the only reason Roscoe employed me. I'm sure if he could help it, he would have one less person to pay and more Gambols to himself.
Birds screamed overhead, and without looking, I knew I was close. The stench of the polluted River Ira was so rancid, anyone living here must have lost their sense of smell. I often speculated at how Roscoe could stand working here when he was used to such fancy conditions back in Highhaven. But then again, he'd do anything for money.
I heard a low, raspy cough,"Now, now Miss Winford. Late again are we?"
I glared at Roscoe and walked over to the first crate I could find, tugging it onto a ship. The ground swayed under my feet, and I ignored the feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach like I had to everyday. I'd never sailed on a boat before, but knew the second one left the docks I would throw up.
"You know full well I'm on time" I snapped back at him, trying to pick up a heavy sack but failing miserably. I wasn't strong, but wouldn't allow myself to be defeated by a bag.
"I don't pay you to stand around all day," Roscoe smirked at me, his golden teeth glinting in the sun. He had obviously eaten so much crap in his pampered, frilly life that his teeth had rotted away. Karma. You do bad things to slaves, bad things happen to you.
I didn't reply, despite desperately wanting to. He was just baiting me.
The only good thing about him was that he didn't ask questions. He knew I was somehow related to my mother, Louise, but not that I was her daughter. He wasn't even curious at to how old I was, and that I should really have been a slaving at the furnaces at this age.
The furnaces. No matter how far you walked, they never left your line of sight. They towered over the horizon, turning the sky black from it's revolting smoke. No wonder everywhere around here was so polluted, and the fish in the River Ira dead.
Suddenly, I heard an agonized scream behind me.
"She's my child! You can't take her!" A woman ran out of her house after a mercenary who was carrying a youngster away. She made a mad dash, and tried to grab his arm, attempting to stop him, but he just pushed her to the ground.
"You can't take her!" She repeated scrambling to her feet.
"Keeping a child from the Regime is punishable by death. As is attacking a mercenary."
If the woman heard him, she didn't show it. Once again she made another desperate attempt at taking her child back, who looked about twelve.
What happened next was very fast.
A click and a bang.
The woman fell to the floor, a puddle of crimson forming around her now still head.
The mercenary placed the shrieking kid onto the road next.
A click and a bang.
The child fell to the ground...
Chapter 2 is done finally! So now you've met Eden, what do you think of her? Don't worry, I'll be continuing to develop her character through out the course of the story.
Stick around, once everyone's introduced, things will start to get hotter! :3 xx